Beaty takes over Crean basketball program

While new Crean Lutheran head basketball coach Josh Beaty hasn’t been roaming sidelines for very long, he has realized rather quickly that coaching is his life’s calling.

Beaty, who was hired last month to replace Dan Fink, is the second boys basketball coach in school history. The Reno, Nev. native moved to California a few years ago after finishing his basketball career at Simpson University in Redding, Calif. He decided, on a whim, to look up coaching jobs on the CIF website to see what was out there.

He stumbled upon the contact information for legendary Santa Margarita boys basketball coach Jerry Debusk and contacted him. Eventually, he was given the job as the freshman ‘B’ team coach. Though he had never coached, things fell into place quickly.

“I never really thought of myself as a coach, because I always wanted to play,” Beaty said. “I coached for 15 minutes and I was like, ‘Wow, I want to do this the rest of my life.’”

After coaching at Santa Margarita for three-and-a-half years, Beaty took the head coaching job at La Serna High School in Whittier. In his lone season coaching at the school, the Lancers went 11-15. After the season, Beaty spoke to a friend who worked at Crean was told of the opportunity to coach their boys program.

“I was not unhappy to be at La Serna. I wasn’t looking for another job,” Beaty said. “[A friend called and said], ‘Hey man, I know you’re happy at La Serna but our head boys basketball coach just resigned, we’re going to have a teaching job open here, I’ve already told the athletic director about you.”

The move made sense for Beaty logistically: he, his wife and daughter all live in Irvine anyway.

“[Crean is] literally across the street from my house,” Beaty said. “And I was commuting to Whittier every day, which was 45 minutes.”

Now that he’s the man in charge at Crean, Beaty has plenty of work to do. The team went 6-17 in 2012 and had a 1-9 record in the Academy League.

With that being said, he isn’t looking at 2013 as a rebuilding year. Instead, he says there is plenty of opportunity to win now and is embracing the challenge of building a program from the ground-up.

“We want to compete to win the Academy League immediately,” Beaty said. “It’s not completely unrealistic. We’re not in a league with Mater Dei and Orange Lutheran and JSerra. Absolutely, we’ve talked about competing this year.”

He is, however, looking to the future as well. He wants to establish a culture of winning, and he believes that starts by working hard and paying attention to details.

“There’s no tricks,” Beaty said. “We’re going to outwork people, we’re going to be more detailed than people and approach things the right way.”

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